In my view, Mary McCrory got
it right when she said that the Project for a New American Century
manifesto reads like it was written in a tree house. Nevertheless, it is
documentary evidence showing the direction the worst aspects of our
government -- the ones who are now in power -- have been taking for the
last thirty plus years. Their goal, as laid out in various PNAC papers, is
permanent world domination, and for these people, there is no doubt that
the ends justify the means. Professor Alfred McCoy
talks about that in his book,
A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on
Terror, a history of the CIA’s decades-long study of techniques of
psychological control, including torture.At
first, McCoy says, the government dabbled heavily in drugs, including the
notorious LSD experiments of the Vietnam era. But what really worked, they
discovered after lots of trial and error (and billions of dollars), are a
couple of simple principles: sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain.
When Professor McCoy saw the black-hooded figures from the Abu Ghraib
photos, posed in stress positions with electrodes dangling from their
fingers, he instantly recognized classic CIA technique.....(full article)

The Inalienable Right to
Self Defense: Balancing the Power
by Kim Petersen

Given the current
foreboding state of affairs in the world, it is fundamentally flawed logic
and morality for progressives to denounce the menaced countries over their
alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. Progressives should instead focus the
thrust of their remonstration at the nuclear-armed states and their
military belligerency that fillips the need for a nuclear deterrent.
Progressivism is about equality and peace. While multilateral disarmament
must be a foremost priority, in lieu of attaining this aim, progressives
should be defending Iran’s legitimate right to an effective
self-defense.....(full article)

When the Whole White House is Criminal,
How Do You Impeach an Entire Administration?by James Charles

The
list of criminal acts is long, depressing as it is frightening. Equally
depressing is the silence of the Democrats, the media and ordinary
citizens. Is American democracy dead?In the current issue of
The National Review, William F. Buckley calls for the Bush
administration to admit that it made a hideous mistake by invading Iraq,
writing that “the administration has, now, to cope with failure and the
acknowledgment of defeat” of its entire policy from launching the war to
believing it could unite and pacify religious enemies whose mutual hatred
goes back a millennia, to installing a government that superficially
resembles a democracy. On one hand, when the dean of modern conservative
politics says Iraq was a mistake, even the most ideologically driven
neo-con must pay attention. On the other, the “failure” and “defeat” he
writes about is not simply another “Oops, we goofed!” mea culpa
that White House apologists can spin on the Sunday morning interview
shows. While cloaking his condemnation in polite Ivy League-ese terms like
“postulates” and “mitigation of policies,” Mr. Buckley overlooks one
simple fact: No matter how noble a policy of spreading freedom may look on
paper, the White House has been criminal in carrying it out.....(full
article)

Keep the South Dakota Time Machine From
Taking Us Back to a Bloody Past! by Dennis Rahkonen

For as long as women and
girls have gotten knocked up by men and boys whose sense of responsible
propriety has been as flaccid as their libidinous yearning was rock hard,
abortion has woven a constant sub-text through our collective
history. Millions of females over the centuries did not wish impregnation,
having had countless, painfully compelling reasons why giving birth
against their wills was objectively unacceptable. In the absence of legal
sanction or safe and sterile medical conditions for abortion, veritable
legions of desperate recipients of misapplied, selfish “love” disastrously
took matters into their own, frightened hands. Others submitted to the far
from tender mercies of assorted midnight practitioners offering “help” in
the form of voodoo chants and rusty knives. If all the females who’ve
perished from officially prohibited abortions could be assembled in one
place, their ghostly ranks would stretch from left to right -- front to
back -- far beyond the naked eye’s vision. It would be like trying to peer
across an ocean.....
(full article)

The Good Newsby Mary Pitt

Our President is complaining
because our media is not reporting the "good news" from Iraq, the order
that has been established, the school that has been opened, the fact that
there is now power and water some of the time in most places. Well, after
three months, there is no power, water or schools in New Orleans, USA! The
people there are still homeless, their children still lost to them, and
the homes still lying in rubble with dead bodies in some of them. The
only reason we have to worry about "re-building" Iraq is because we are
the ones that blew it all to hell. They call it the "potter's barn rule":
"If you break it, you buy it." We are obligated to "fix" Iraq because we
broke it. Why did we break it? Because, or so we were led to believe,
because our Fearless Leader believed it necessary, that Iraq was a threat
to us. Now we know that they were not but they are now! Now they resent
being occupied by our troops and they are blowing up their own facilities
faster than our "independent contractors" can rebuild them.....(full
article)

February 24

The Case of Dr. Rafil
Dhafir: Victim of the US Invasion of Iraqby Madis Senner & Jennifer Van Bergen

In 2005, Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an
Iraqi-born American citizen, was convicted in Syracuse, New York of 59
felony charges. In addition to charges of mail and wire fraud, tax
evasion, money laundering, Medicare fraud, and mishandling charity money,
Dhafir was convicted of violating the sanctions against Iraq. Dhafir was
sentenced to 22 years in jail. Dhafir was one of the few, if not the only
person, to be criminally charged with breaking the Iraq Sanctions.
Normally, a violation of the sanctions results only in a civil fine.
Dhafir’s crime was that he circumvented the sanctions, raising and
funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars for humanitarian aid to Iraqis
suffering from the U.S. sanctions. While the prosecution claims that he
was a common money launderer and defrauder of donors, the sanction
violations remain the centerpiece of the charges and were the direct cause
of him receiving the maximum sentence. But it is our opinion that had the
U.S. not chosen to invade Iraq, Dr. Dhafir would not have been convicted.
Arguably, he might never even have been brought to trial.....(full
article)

Out of Touch with Military Realityby Gene C. Gerard

For the last two years the Bush
administration has insisted that the war in Iraq has not handicapped the
military. To the contrary, the administration has insisted that our
military is stronger than ever. Last month, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld gave a speech in which he stated that the armed services “is
probably as strong and capable as it has ever been in the history of this
country. They are more experienced, more capable, better equipped than
ever before.” But a report on military supplies from the Government
Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative office of Congress,
indicates that Secretary Rumsfeld is seriously mistaken.....(full
article)

Well, I Was Wondering Whose
Government It Wasby Mark Drolette

Even a blind Bush produces a
kernel of truth once in a while. While trying to defend the selling off of
yet another piece of what little remains of America -- the port operations
deal with the United Arab Emirates -- George W. said: “The more people
learn about the transaction that has been scrutinized and approved by my
government, the more they’ll be comforted that our ports will be secure.”
(Associated
Press, Ted
Bridis, 02/23/06) Didja catch the error? Of course you did, because,
unlike Dubya, you know a thing or two about how our system works. You
know, like checks and balances, laws, that sort of thing. He said “my”
government. Oops -- his bad. What he really meant to say, of course, was
“Dick and Daddy’s government.”.....(full
article)

Nothing Stops Mardi Grasby Jordan Flaherty

In New Orleans’ Central
Business District, a prominent billboard advertising Southern Comfort
liquor proclaims “Nothing Stops Mardi Gras. Nothing.” The festive ad
haunts me, seeming callous and cruel, "you've faced a huge loss, and now
we want to use your city and cultural traditions to sell a lot of
alcohol." Citywide, Mardi Gras is everywhere, but not without controversy.
Many are angry at the idea of a huge party taking place while bodies are
still being recovered in Ninth Ward houses. And in diaspora communities
such as Atlanta, there is a lot of anger at the idea of a huge party going
one while they are kept out. A past leader of the Zulu Mardi Gras Krewe
even sued his organization (unsuccessfully) to stop them from parading
this year. I have mixed feelings. I love Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Not
the parades and Bourbon Street you see on TV, but the other Mardi Gras
that the media doesn’t show. There are Mardi Gras traditions for nearly
every neighborhood and community, a series of cultural customs ranging
from King Cake and the lewd displays of Krewe Du Vieux to the dogs
parading in Barkus; the clown punks and shopping cart battles of Krewe Du
Poux; the fabulous costumes of the St Ann Parade; and more than anything
the cultural traditions of Black Mardi Gras, encompassing everything from
Zulu, the one Black major parade, to neighborhood celebrations involving
the masked Mardi Gras Indians, Skeletons, and Baby Dolls.....(full
article)

The Failure of Our First Amendment
Success:
Dealing with the Death of Discourseby Robert Jensen

There is no shortage
of books these days analyzing what contemporary U.S. society gets wrong:
Illegal wars of aggression, a cavalier attitude toward potential
ecological collapse, narrow-minded religious fundamentalism, widening
economic inequality, and lingering racism, sexism, and homophobia. Look
too closely at this society, beyond the self-congratulatory triumphalism,
and it’s not such a pretty picture. But one of the criteria on which the
United States ranks high in the world is legal protection for freedom of
expression. Our legal regime built on the First Amendment’s protections of
freedom of speech and press is not perfect, but over time the scope of
real expressive liberty has expanded, as popular movements and progressive
legal thinkers have demanded that liberty and crafted the rules for making
it real in day-to-day life. That’s why Ronald K.L. Collins’ and David M.
Skover’s The Death of Discourse is so chilling: The book details
why our traditional approach to freedom of expression -- the ideas that
led to this expansion of liberty, ideas that are admirable in so many ways
-- is ill-equipped to cope with either the contemporary challenges we face
or the future. In fact, this traditional approach to freedom of expression
may well be hastening the collapse of the culture....(full article)

February 23

Port Folly-0: Outsourcing Our Own
Security? by Lila Rajiva

President Bush has
approved a deal selling control of six major US Ports to an Arab company,
Dubai Ports World, for $6.8bn. DP World, a state-owned business based in
the United Arab Emirates (UAE), bought out London-based Peninsular &
Oriental Steam Navigation Co. which runs major commercial operations in
New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. This
has the two parties in an upside down tizzy with the Democrats screaming
about national security and foreigners and the Republicans -- at least of
the free trader sort -- hurling back epithets about anti-Arabism and
racism. It’s enough to make one take to . . . well, port.....(full
article)

Dubai Does Dallasby Niranjan Ramakrishnan

OK, you got me. Dallas
doesn't have a port. But if it did, it would likely be among those given
over to be run by a Dubai company, as are the ports of New York, Newark,
Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami and New Orleans. Arguments are flying about
who decided what, whether safeguards are in place, and about the fact that
a British company had been doing it earlier, etc. None of this should
obscure the single most significant aspect of this bombshell, which is
this: in the so-called “post 9-11” world which the superpatrioitactors in
Washington keep talking about, it is OK to traduce liberties at will, but
real national security can be freely shortchanged in the name of
tradition. Worse, such dubious (Dubaious?) decisions are justified in the
name of trade. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Michael "Bird Flu
over the Superdome" Chertoff, said on television that while national
security needs were important, they could be attended to while still
maintaining our commitments to global trade. Who died and made him
chairman of WTO? Why is he talking about global trade when asked about
homeland security? (full article)

Call it déjà vu but
Israeli television reports are branding Mahmoud Abbas as irrelevant in a
move identical to their position toward the late Palestinian president
Yasser Arafat. And though Hamas has largely honored the truce established
last year, not only has Israel broken that truce over 24,000 times
resulting in nearly 200 Palestinians deaths, Shin Bet has rejected an
extended truce with Hamas. IMEMC
& Agencies reports that 31 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas won
the majority vote in the Palestinian elections on January 25th. These
deaths are part of a retaliatory strategy as outlined by Israeli Defense
Minister Shaul Mofaz. According to Mofaz, the Palestinian people have made
their government part of the "Axis of Evil" along with
Syria and
Iran. As a result, “punitive
measures” will be taken by Israeli forces against all the Palestinian
people, he stated.

Yhe Glenn McIntosh family has
to introduce their 12-year-old daughter Caitlin with a photograph because
that is all they have left. Caitlin committed suicide eight weeks after
being prescribed the SSRIs Paxil and Zoloft.....(full
article)

The Democrats' Withdrawal Plan: Another
Election Year Stuntby Joshua Frank

The Democrats are getting
ready for the upcoming election season. Having done so poorly for the past
. . . well, decade or so, they may finally be seeing an opportunity to
capitalize on one of the Bush administration’s many misfortunes. Whether
it’s Jack Abramoff’s lobbying sleaze, Cheney’s happy trigger finger, or
Scooter Libby’s indictment -- they sure have plenty of Republican mishaps
to choose from. They
certainly would like us to believe they're pulling it all together. The
Democrats are trying to latch on to one of the many Bush blunders -- they
want us to believe they are finally catching on to the fact that the
majority of Americans think this war isn’t going so hot. So the Democrats
are putting forward a plan to get the troops out of Iraq. Seems like a
logical idea. People would go for that, they think. So, reluctantly, the
Democrats have drawn up plans to do just such a thing. But, in order
not to look soft on terror, the Dems won’t be calling for a
“withdrawal” of US troops, rather, they’ll just “redeploy” them. It’s tricky stuff,
really.....(full article)

Iran Was Not Referred to the Security
Council for Noncomplianceby Mike Whitney

How powerful is the
mainstream media? Is it powerful enough to convince the public that Iran
was “referred” to the UN Security Council for violations to the NPT when,
in fact, it wasn’t? The IAEA did not report on Iran’s “noncompliance” to
the Security Council, because there is no evidence that Iran has done
anything wrong. As nuclear physicist Gordon Prather points out in his
recent article, “March
Madness”, “the Board didn't report anything.” (emphasis in the
original) Nothing? Then why do the media keep insisting that Iran has been
called before the Security Council for noncompliance?
(full
article)

Any Military Critics Out There Today? by Murray Polner

When Rep. John Murtha, the
ex-Marine hawk who has always been close to the Pentagon, spoke out
recently against the war in Iraq and called for drawing down the number of
American troops, he was in all likelihood echoing the private doubts and
objections of senior military officers. When, for example, General Peter
Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contradicted Donald
Rumsfeld about Iraqi forces’ harsh treatment of captives, he “won silent
cheers from many senior uniformed officers by standing firm,” as Eric
Schmitt reported in the New York Times last December 30th. Pace
had to back down as administration flacks moved quickly to soft-pedal any
differences between Rumsfeld and the top brass. Nevertheless, these two
incidents -- and obviously many other whispered conversations held among
officers and their friends -- only underscore the fact that some in the
professional military have serious doubts about a war and occupation that
has cost so much in lives, money and moral standing, not to mention the
serious impact it has had on the military.....(full
article)

The Unholy Alliance Strikes Back
by Neve Gordon

It was a beautiful winter day. I was among
approximately 80 Israeli activists who set out to plant trees in the South
Hebron region, home to hundreds of Palestinian cave-dwellers. The desert
air was chilly, the land moist after the rains, and the hills full with
wild flowers. Yet the tranquil setting was deceptive. For years the
cave-dwellers have been subjected to ongoing harassment by the Israeli
military, police, and Jewish settlers, whose aim is to undercut their
livelihood so that they will “voluntarily” move to other parts of the West
Bank. The idea, so it seems, is to cleanse this region of its Palestinian
inhabitants.....(full article)

What Condi Rice Has in Store for Iranby Mehdi Hosseini

Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice has informed a Senate panel that the Bush administration
plans to be spending $75m (on top of the $10m in 2006 budget) to “reach
out to Iranian people and support their calls for freedom.” Of this
amount, $50m is to be spent on radio and satellite TV transmissions into
Iran. The rest of it on things like “expanding Internet access,”
supporting “political dissidents,” sponsoring “labor unions and political
organization,” granting fellowships and scholarships to Iranian students
“who have never experienced democracy,” etc. She added that "the United
States will actively confront the policies of this Iranian regime," but
the $75m package is intended to "support the aspirations of the Iranian
people for freedom in their own country." She went on to say that she
thinks “the solidarity model is a good one”, that when “people organize
themselves and really become unified in calling for change, then you get
the change you need”, and -- lest we forget she is a concert pianist --
that she had “read that it is forbidden in some quarters to play Beethoven
and Mozart in Tehran,” so she hopes that Iranians can one day “play it in
New York or Los Angeles.”.....(full article)

Province of Michigan: A Modest Proposalby Jerry Politex

Toyota recently had to decide
whether to put its new auto plant in the U.S. or in Canada. It chose
Canada because that country's health care policy is such that Toyota's
workers would receive full health care through their taxes, and the auto
company would not have to share in that cost, making the price of their
cars lower. More recently, Ford followed in the footsteps of other U.S.
auto makers, laying off tens of thousands of workers and closing a number
of plants because, in part, its cars were too expensive, due to the
company's health care coverage of its workers added to the cost of its
cars. The solution to this problem is obvious.....(full
article)

February 21

Six Months After Katrina
Who Was Left Behind Then and Who is Being Left Behind Now?
by Bill Quigley

Nearly six months ago, my wife Debbie and I
boated out of New Orleans. We left five days after Katrina struck. Debbie
worked as an oncology nurse in a New Orleans hospital. She volunteered to
come in during the hurricane so that other nurses with children could
evacuate. There were about 2,000 people huddled in the hospital --
patients, staff and families of staff and patients. Plate glass windows
exploded in the lobby and on crosswalks and on several floors. Water
poured in though broken windows, ceilings, and down the elevator shafts.
Eight feet of brown floodwater surrounded us. The entire city immediately
lost electricity. Soon the hospital backup generators located in the
basement failed. No lights. No phones. Even the water system stopped. No
drinking water. No flush toilets. . . . . The Katrina evacuation was
totally self-help. If you had the resources, a car, money and a place to
go, you left. Over one million people evacuated – 80 to 90% of the
population. No provisions were made for those who could not evacuate
themselves. To this day no one has a reliable estimate of how many people
were left behind in Katrina -- that in itself says quite a bit about what
happened. Who was left behind in the self-help evacuation? (full
article)

Living the American Reamby Mark Drolette

From Reuters,
02/14/06:
"The [U.S.] government may waive up to $7 billion in royalty payments from
companies pumping oil and natural gas on federal territory in the next
five years, the New York Times reported…The royalty relief would
amount to one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in U.S. history,
even though the administration assumes oil prices will remain above $50 a
barrel throughout that period…The report cited estimates in the Interior
Department’s recent budget plan that would allow companies to pump about
$65 billion in oil and natural gas without paying royalties. 'We need to
remember the primary reason that incentives are given,' said Johnnie M.
Burton, director of the federal Minerals Management Service [MMS],
according to the report. 'It’s not to make more money, necessarily. It’s
to make more oil, more gas, because production of fuel for our nation is
essential to our economy and essential to our people.'" Whoa! I can’t
believe my luck. This came out just in time. Now I have my defense for the
bank robbery rap I face in court next week: I’ll tell the judge that when
I thrust that gun into the teller’s face and handed her the note, I wasn’t
making a demand for money, necessarily; rather, it was to make
banks more aware, more alert, because, by golly, protection of their
assets is essential to their economics and essential to their people.....(full article)

Bubblicious: Looking at the US Real
Estate Market
by Seth Sandronsky

Many eyes are on the
U.S. real estate market. “During the past five years, home prices have
risen at an annual rate of 9.2 percent,” according to the 2006 Economic
Report of the President released on Feb. 13. Was this normal growth, or
not? We need the historical context of home price increases to reply.....(full
article)

Starving the Beast: Programmed Ineptitudeby Jack Random

Neoconservative
Republicans essentially do not care how poorly the institutions of
government work because their ultimate goal is to decimate those
institutions. Whether it is mining regulations, banking, securities,
health care, social security, environmental protection, education,
communications, immigration, port security or emergency management, the
goal is the same: Privatize basic functions and reduce government
oversight responsibility to a rubber stamp. In neoconservative parlance,
it is called “Starving the beast.” The beast is the government, itself,
and while our elected officials are not so bold as to deliver a killing
thrust, they can bleed the beast with a thousand razor-like cuts and deny
essential funding required to maintain its functions. From the perspective
of society’s well-being, the failures of the Starve the Beast policy have
been nothing short of spectacular yet few analysts or pundits have
bothered to connect the dots between the policy and its outcomes.....(full
article)

This is Not Progressivismby Kim Petersen

The progressive spectrum is
wide ranging. Progressives are not homogeneous and dissension on
viewpoints should be expected. But certain characteristics are defining
features of progressives. The stereotyping of a group and holding
prejudices based upon such stereotypes is contrary to progressive
principles. When someone from the progressive spectrum writes viewpoints
considered anathema, it is incumbent that other progressives dissociate
themselves from such views.John
Kaminski is a writer described on his website
as an “Internet phenomenon [who] is the prototype of a new generation of
political reporters and social analysts who are not corrupted by the
thought-deadening corporate media mindlock.” Kaminski does deftly capture
the despair and outrage, shared by many progressives, at the poverty,
carnage, and horror being wreaked in the world by imperialist-Zionist
interests. Kaminski, however, separates himself from many people usually
considered progressives.....(full article)

J'accuse: Facilitating Fascismby Zbignew Zingh

What kind of doctors has the United States
trained who stand by idly while prison guards force-feed prisoners in
Guantanamo Bay with plastic pipes shoved down the noses of the shackled
and tortured? What kind of psychologists have we educated who assist the
Pentagon inventing new ways to torture men and women, breaking their minds
without breaking their skin; who help create government propaganda, plant
false news stories, devise “psy-ops” to mislead us all? (full
article)

February 20

Europe's Free Speech Paradox by Kim Petersen

Whether questioning
conventional history is anti-Semitism is debatable. Illuminating is that
Arab League Secretary General Amr Mousa brings to the fore the dichotomy
in adherence to free speech depending on who is making that speech and who
is on the offended end of remarks made under the cover of free speech. The
infamous Danish caricatures of the Islamic prophet Mohammed are argued to
be a free speech issue. The cartoons are published, so free speech was
exercised. That does not make the issue one about free speech. The issue
was rather about the right to make choices. What kind of choice did
Flemming Rose, the culture editor at Jyllands Posten, make when he
commissioned the cartoons? It was a calculated choice to be provocative,
blasphemous, offensive, and to stir up enmity between Denmark’s majority
population and its Muslim minority. . . . If the Europeans were so
concerned about freedom of speech then they should speak out against the
denial of the right of free speech to historian David Irving in Austria
and others imprisoned elsewhere in Europe for their views.....
(full
article)

Exposing Incitements: Those Danish
Muhammad Cartoonsby Gary Leupp

I visited Denmark as
a child and have fond memories of Copenhagen’s immaculate streets, bright
sunlight, and touristy Viking-icon ambiance. I remember, too, visiting the
Tuborg brewery and consuming a little too much free soda. I had to urinate
into a bottle in the back seat of the car, pouring it out onto the
spotless street when my dad came to a stoplight. Even as I defiled their
public space, I had good feelings about the Danes and Scandinavians in
general. Having 1/4 Swedish and 3/8 Norwegian ancestry, I already felt
great pride that “my people” (or some of my people since my other roots
are Swiss, German, English, and Scottish) had once won terrorized the
world as they roamed it aboard their dragon-ships....
(full
article)

WWIII or Bust: Implications of a US
Attack on Iranby Heather Wokusch

Witnessing
the Bush administration's drive for an attack on Iran is like being a
passenger in a car with a raving drunk at the wheel. Reports of impending
doom surfaced a year ago, but now it's official: under orders from Vice
President Cheney's office, the Pentagon has developed "last resort"
aerial-assault plans using long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched
ballistic missiles with both conventional and nuclear weapons. How ironic
that the Pentagon proposes using nuclear weapons on the pretext of
protecting the world from nuclear weapons. Ironic also that Iran has
complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, allowing
inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything," yet those pushing for an
attack, the USA and Israel, have not.....(full
article)

The US and Iran: Birds of a Featherby Gene C. Gerard

Given the Bush
administration’s rhetoric regarding the Iranian government you wouldn’t
think the two have much, if anything, in common. In his 2002 State of the
Union address, President Bush referred to Iran as part of an “axis of
evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” And he criticized the
Iranian government’s efforts to “repress the Iranian people’s hope of
freedom.” This week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified before
the Senate regarding the administration’s request for $75 million to help
further democracy in Iran, in which she stated that Iran was under the
control of a “radical regime.” Yet the Bush administration recently went
out of its way to support an Iranian initiative to deny access to gay and
lesbian organizations within the United Nations.....(full
article)

Capitalism is Racism: An Update on the
New Orleans Tragedyby Thomas Harrelson

Since Sept. 11, private
advocacy groups that promote U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and
the war on terror have targeted professional academics who disagree with
right-wing agendas. Although the assault on academic professionals who
disagree with U.S. foreign policy is not new, the right-wing thought
police have been churning the political rhetoric against professors who
express “patriotic incorrectness.”.....(full
article)

Women Who Make the World Worse:
A Letter to Kate O'Beirne
by Rosemarie Jackowski

Dear Kate,
Right now I am watching your interview on C-Span Book TV. Thank you for
the book, which covers many important topics.Women
Who Make the World Worse contains some valid arguments. There is much
in your book that is irrefutable; but during the interview you made a
serious mistake. At one point you said that a single mother should look
for a father for her children. That statement is evidence of your lack of
understanding of the root causes of childhood poverty, a leading social
problem of our time. It feeds into the myth that these children have no
fathers. I need to remind you that there have not been any Immaculate
Conceptions in recent years. There is no bright star shining in the
East.....(full article)

Clouds of Missed Buckshot by Peter Kurth

Curses, foiled again. I
wanted to write this week about that new test for people over 50 -- “baby
boomers and their parents,” as the Associated Press calls them --
published by the American Medical Association and measuring the risk a
generic geriatric has of "dying within four years." You can imagine this
is a subject dear to my heart. I’m over 50 myself and, let’s face it, a
bit sloppy when it comes to “maximizing” my health and keeping an eye on
all those “co-morbid factors” that can lead to an early death. Frankly, I
don’t want to spend what time remains with my doors locked and blinds
drawn, hiding under the bed and eating seaweed and sawdust in exchange for
a few months of life -- if I’m lucky, that is, have the right genes and
health insurance, and don’t go hunting with Dick Cheney. It just isn’t
worth it, and I wanted to tell you why.....(full
article)

An End to Forest Service Abuse on
Montana's
Kootenai National Forest?by Matthew Koehler

The 2.2 million acre Kootenai National
Forest in the extreme northwestern corner of Montana is home to our
state's most biologically unique national forest, containing Montana's
only temperate rainforest ecosystem and providing critical habitat for
grizzly bear, gray wolf, Canada lynx, woodland caribou, bull trout,
westslope cutthroat trout, inland redband trout and over 190 bird species.
Unfortunately, crisscrossed by over 8,300 miles of logging roads and
fragmented by over 750,000 acres that have been logged at one time or
another, the Kootenai is also home to one of Montana's most overexploited
forest ecosystems. Hopefully the Forest Service's pattern of abuse on the
Kootenai National Forest is about to come to an end.....
(full
article)

All this
Daddy O'Molloch,
Producer, induced,
imagined, produced,
all this introduced

(Oh Daddy-0 fast cars
salmon- pink cadillac
days of making it making it,
made it more
Celebrities born
of his shows
than anyone knows
Daddy-0 legend
Daddy-0 Ours
Daddy-0 Galaxy of
Immortal Stars): ......(full poem)

A poem by Viola Ransel about napalm and
white phosphorous.....(full poem)

February 16

Pictures Not at the Exhibition:
The Torture Photos Congress Didn’t Want Us to Seeby Lila Rajiva

Yesterday,
Australia’s public broadcaster, SBS, aired some 60
unpublished photos of torture at Abu Ghraib prison on its show
Dateline at 8:30 PM. The images were rapidly re-broadcast on Arab TV
and other news outfits and have been condemned immediately as violations
of international law by the International Red Cross. The new detainee
diorama -- a world exclusive, apparently -- includes pictures of bleeding
and hooded prisoners bound to beds and doors, of naked men handcuffed
together or in a pile, of corpses, of dogs snarling at the faces of
prisoners, of cigarette burns on buttocks and wounds from shotgun pellets,
and of even more graphic sexual torture. And it comes on the heels of a
British video showing British soldiers brutally assaulting unarmed Iraqi
teens in Basra. No one can now question that criminal behavior was rampant
among Coalition Forces.....(full article)

Imprisoned in New Orleans by Jordan Flaherty and Tamika Middleton

When hurricane Katrina hit,
there was no evacuation plan for 7,000 prisoners in the New Orleans city
jail, generally known as Orleans Parish Prison (OPP), or the approximate
1,500 prisoners in nearby jails. According to first-hand accounts gathered
by advocates, prisoners were abandoned in their cells while the water was
rising around them. They were subjected to a heavily armed “rescue” by
state prison guards that involved beatings, mace and being left in the sun
with no water or food for several days, followed by a transfer to state
maximum security prisons. Although their treatment brought national
attention to the condition of prisoners in Louisiana, and comparison to
prison abuse scandals from Attica to Abu Ghraib, local government
officials have attempted to dodge accountability and continue with
business as usual.....(full
article)

Gonzales Withholding Plame E-Mailsby Jason Leopold

Sources close to the investigation into the
leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson have revealed this week that
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not turned over e-mails to the
special prosecutor's office that may incriminate Vice President Dick
Cheney, his aides, and other White House officials who allegedly played an
active role in unmasking Plame Wilson's identity to reporters.
Moreover, these sources said that in early 2004 Cheney was interviewed by
federal prosecutors investigating the Plame Wilson leak and testified that
neither he nor any of his senior aides were involved in unmasking her
undercover CIA status to reporters and that no one in the vice president's
office had attempted to discredit her husband, a vocal critic of the
administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence. Cheney did not testify under
oath or under penalty of perjury when he was interviewed by federal
prosecutors.....(full article)

More Proof of Prewar Intelligence
Manipulation
by the Bush Administrationby Walter C. Uhler

Writing in the March/April
2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar launched a furious
assault on the Bush administration for its manipulation of prewar
intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and links to
al Qaeda. Mr. Pillar should know, because he was the CIA's National
Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia (NESA) from 2000 to
2005. Most damaging is
his assertion: "The administration used intelligence not to inform
decision-making, but to justify a decision already made." That decision,
of course, was to invade Iraq. And, as we know, plenty of evidence exists
-- especially as provided by Bush administration insider, former Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill -- to prove that the Bush administration plotted,
from its very first day in office, to effect regime change in Iraq.....(full
article)

Riding High with Hugo Chavezby Mike Whitney

The divisions
between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and George W. Bush are more than
just personal. Chavez imagines a world where government is deeply involved
in the health and welfare of its citizens and where certain guarantees of
security are provided under the rule of law. He has worked tirelessly to
actualize a modern Bolivarian Revolution, loosening the centuries-long
grip of colonial rule and binding the continent together in a shared
vision of peace and cooperation.....(full article)

The Anti-Empire ReportMy Warhol Momentby William Blum

In case you don't know, on January 19 the latest audiotape from Osama
bin Laden was released and in it he declared: "If you [Americans] are
sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you.
And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it
would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State, which
states in its introduction ..." He then goes on to quote the opening of a
paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British
edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full
reads.....(full article)

Who is the Savage and Who the Hero?
by Paul D’Amato

The almost unanimous
presentation of the conflict over the publication of cartoons caricaturing
the prophet Muhammad as an issue of free speech papers over the fact that
it’s part of a fairly systematic propaganda campaign against Muslims in
Europe and the U.S. in recent years. This is not new. The assault belongs
on a long historical list with the dehumanization of Africans to justify
slavery, of Irish Catholics to justify British conquest of Ireland, of
Indians to justify the takeover of the “New” world, of Jews and Slavs to
justify Nazi conquest, and of various peoples to justify colonialism. The almost forgotten
case of the 1952 “Mau Mau” rebellion in Kenya is an instructive case in
point.....(full article)

When
Dick Cheney surfaced on Feb. 15 long enough for an interview with Fox News
eminence Brit Hume -- an event that CNN’s Jack Cafferty promptly likened
to “Bonnie interviewing Clyde” -- the vice presidential spin emerged from
a timeworn bag of political tricks. Cheney took responsibility. Whatever
that means. The New York
Times website swiftly made its top headline “Cheney Takes Full
Responsibility for Shooting Hunter.” Just before Fox News Channel aired
interview segments at length, the summary from anchor Hume told viewers
that Cheney had accepted “full responsibility for the incident.” Hours
later, the Washington Post’s front-page story led this way: “Vice
President Cheney accepted full responsibility yesterday...” Ironically -- while
news outlets kept using the phrase “full responsibility” -- the transcript
of the interview posted on FoxNews.com shows that Cheney never used any
form of the word “responsibility.”.....(full
article)

The "Official Story" as of today is that Mr.
Whittington approached Dick Cheney from behind. He who had other
priorities during Vietnam had none now. He wheeled around and sprayed him
liberally in the face, neck and chest, confusing him with a quail or a
duck, thus adding insult to injury, as it were. After which Mr. Cheney
apparently went incommunicado for nearly a day, thus rendering himself
unavailable to the police for questioning. Theories on why this might be
are rife, with rather high odds for the likelihood that the old campaigner
was tight as an owl when he loosed said pellets on his unfortunate hunting
companion. The jokes came thick and fast, from Letterman to Leno and of
course the inimitable John Stewart, who looked up and uttered a prayer to
the Lord Jesus Christ for this godsend.....(full
article)

The Rhetoric of Al Gore: Not to Be
Trustedby Joshua Frank

Al Gore has become
somewhat of an American idol these past few years. After his departure
from Washington in 2000 the ex-presidential candidate has switch-backed
across the county giving thundering sermons to overflowing auditoriums and
town halls. He’s railed against the Republican agenda in Iraq, denouncing
President Bush and the neocons at every turn. Gore is fast becoming the
antiwar celebrity du jour, capturing the imaginations of many who fear the
vicious Bush cartel. . . . Despite all the lofty rhetoric, Al Gore’s
record on Iraq is anything but dovish.....(full
article)

A video shown on BBC
TV on February 11, 2006 shows British soldiers savagely beating and
kicking unarmed Iraqi teenagers in an army compound. Officials at the
Ministry of Defense are said to have investigated and established beyond
doubt the authenticity of the video. Shot secretly “for fun” as a home
movie from a rooftop in Basra in southern Iraq by a corporal and shown to
friends at a home base in Europe, it was given to the News of theWorld later by an anonymous whistleblower. The footage shows
soldiers pulling four Iraqi boys in their early teens into their army base
after a riot and beating them with batons, then punching and kicking them
repeatedly on the body and head and between the legs. Within the space of
one minute, some 42 blows are rained on the four teens whom the
whistleblower said “were just kids” who did not even have on shoes. One
soldier can also be seen kicking a dead Iraqi in the face. The
unidentified cameraman can be heard laughing and urging his colleagues on
with vulgarities.....(full article)

The Pentagon’s War on the
Internetby Mike Whitney

The
Pentagon has developed a comprehensive strategy for taking over the
internet and controlling the free flow of information. The plan appears in
a recently declassified document, “The
Information Operations Roadmap,” which was provided under the FOIA
(Freedom of Information Act) and revealed in
an article by the BBC. The Pentagon sees the internet in terms of a
military adversary that poses a vital threat to its stated mission of
global domination. This explains the confrontational language in the
document, which speaks of “fighting the net,” implying that the internet
is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system.” The Defense Department
places a high value on controlling information. The new program
illustrates their determination to establish the parameters of free
speech.....(full article)

Constitutional Suspension: An Abdication
of Democracy by Jack Random

It is increasingly difficult
to find outrage against the assault on civil liberties epitomized by the
USA Patriot Act and the NSA domestic spying scandal. The sad truth about
the recent “compromise” to extend the Patriot Act is that it may not
matter. Under the most arrogant interpretation of constitutional war
powers in recorded history, congressional mandates have been reduced to an
exercise in symbolic posturing for the duration of an eternal war.....
(full
article)

The New Liberation Movement
by Rosemarie Jackowski

The recent death of Betty Friedan has once
again put the spotlight on the Feminist Movement. There is no question
that during much of history, women have been devalued. There is also no
question that Friedan and other leaders of the women's movement are owed a
debt of gratitude for their efforts. But there is another side to this
story that is too often dismissed as just unintended consequences. The
movement did not always free women and give them more choices. Often,
women were forced out of the home to work at jobs even more mundane than
the ones they left behind. There was not much liberation afforded to the
women who were forced to become bean counters for corporations. Many women
were transformed from homemakers into widget makers. Leaving the frying
pan behind only to be pushed into the fire was how many viewed the
liberation movement.....
(full article)

-- Satire --
The Windbag in the Willows: How Christopher Rabbit Lost His Stonesby Mark W. Bradley

The last chill wind of early
spring did its best to wriggle through the cracks of Christopher Rabbit’s
cozy little warren, nestled snuggly as it was along the banks of the Main
Stream. Christopher was a comfortably plump little rabbit, with tiny
impish eyes set narrowly in his chubby little rabbit head, a thick pelt of
golden fur the color of alpine sunshine, and a cute little nose as brown
as a roasted chestnut. Yet in spite of his
deceptively soft appearance, Chris Rabbit was a surprisingly dexterous
little critter. He (or at least his mouth) was said to be as swift as a
runaway boulder, and he was known on occasion to make towering leaps (of
faith) over seemingly unbridgeable chasms (of logic). But perhaps the most
astounding of his abilities was his prowess as a swimmer, a skill not
easily mastered by rabbits. Many summer days would find him paddling
around contentedly in the Main Stream, always swimming in the direction of
the current, and laughing all the way to the bank. It was generally agreed
that among the many creatures who inhabited the marshlands surrounding
legendary Toady Hall, Chris was far and away the cleverest little
“toady” of them all.....(full article)

John Ashcroft Spreads His Wingsby Bill Berkowitz

Of the many chums
and political appointees that have passed through the George W. Bush
administration's revolving door, former U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft practically disappeared from the news after he resigned in
November 2004. Unlike former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was
fired by Bush, or Richard Clarke, the former National Coordinator for
Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism -- both of whom
spilt the beans about the administration's shortcomings in best-selling
books -- Ashcroft moved quietly on. . . . Instead, the former AG has
founded a lobbying firm which, in a very short time, has managed to rake
in a fair amount of money representing an assortment of corporate clients,
several of whom stand to reap great profits from the president's war on
terrorism.....(full article)

Jeffrey St. Clair's
most recent book,
Grand Theft Pentagon (Common Courage Press, 2006), is a
collection of muckraking exposes of the corruption and greed that help
fuel Washington's wars. Many of the pieces in the book originally appeared
in CounterPunch, but their presence here in one volume brings
together the full force of the theft and corruption we live with. Although
the scope of the ruling elites' arrogance is easy enough to see, the scope
of the corruption isn't. St. Clair's book changes that.....(full
article)

Dear Mr. Goss, the
timing of your
recent op-ed in the New York Times interestingly coincides with
the upcoming congressional hearing by the House Subcommittee on National
Security, Emerging Threats & International Relations on National Security
Whistleblowers. Your comments are predictably consistent with the pattern
of “preemptive strikes” you and the administration have been keen on
maintaining. I do not blame you for your opposition to legislation to
protect courageous whistleblowers, which will enable the United States
Congress to reclaim some of its authority and oversight that it has given
up for the past five years. No sir, you have all the right and reason to
be nervous. However, I must take issue with your attempt to mislead the
American public -- another habit of your heart -- by presenting them with
false information and misleading statements.....
(full
article)

Bush Administration Ignored Coal Mine
Safety Issues
by Gene C. Gerard

In the last month, 16 coal miners have died
in West Virginia. As a result, West Virginia’s governor recently asked all
of the state’s coal mines to voluntarily suspend operations until safety
inspections can be carried out. Although the public has only recently
become aware of problems with mine safety, the Bush administration has
known for three years that there were significant safety issues. In 2003,
the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the nonpartisan investigative
office of Congress, issued a blistering report on coal mine safety.....(full
article)

Imagineby Patricia Goldsmith

I’m tired of playing
the self-defeating electoral game. We have no reason to expect that in
2006, after six years of rigged elections, everything is suddenly going to
work. In 2006, HAVA will really kick in; our situation could well be
worse. I know in my own state of New York, lobbyists are busily flogging
voting machines. Now and then I get a notice from a committed activist,
and I write e-mails requesting optical scanners with paper ballots, but
it’s a pretty secret process. Responsibility for purchase decisions passed
from the state level, where legislators could be attacked en masse, down
to the county level, and I just have this sick feeling in the pit of my
stomach that the people in charge of choosing our new black box voting
systems can be bought for a not-too-fancy lunch. There’s a lot of money
sloshing around out there, and there’s a lot of takers. Even Democrats are
lobbying for Diebold et al. now, after years of being frozen out. Happy
days!.....(full article)

The Next War: Crossing the Rubiconby John Pilger

. . . . That,
demonstrably, is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the cabal that has
seized power in Washington. But there is a logic to their idiocy -- the
goal of dominance. It also describes Blair, for whom the only logic is
vainglorious. And now he is threatening to take Britain into the nightmare
on offer in Iran. His Washington mentors are unlikely to ask for British
troops, not yet. At first, they will prefer to bomb from a safe height, as
Bill Clinton did in his destruction of Yugoslavia. They are aware that,
like the Serbs, the Iranians are a serious people with a history of
defending themselves and who are not stricken by the effects of a long
siege, as the Iraqis were in 2003. When the Iranian defense minister
promises "a crushing response," you sense he means it.....(full
article)

Trade Deficit Rises:
Financial Fragility and the US
Economy
by Seth Sandronsky

According to the conventional wisdom, the
federal government’s budget deficit harms the private sector of the U.S.
economy. In an AP article on the nation’s record trade deficit (excess of
imports over exports) in 2005, there was no mention that it is double the
size of the federal budget deficit. Size matters. But there is more to
this story.....(full article)

I never in my life
imagined it would be so hard to escape the various American forms of
institutionalized extortion and blackmail. Becoming debt free was the
least of it. And having everyone you know and love believe your have
slipped your moorings is just the beginning. Meanwhile, you become a
Kafkaesque character wondering if you’ve gone nuts, as you simmer in the
ambient wrongness pervading American society and watch the futility of our
vast life-consuming program of intense management and control of
everything, the money, the bombs, the roads, the retirement fund, the
communications, the propaganda, the entire buzzing tower of bullshit so
massive as to make Babel look like a chicken coop. And you ask every
passing stranger in the shopping mall, “Is all this fucking necessary?”
Only to discover that you are in an isolation chamber, a vacuum, a void in
which no one can hear your voice at all. They are sleepwalking. They are
shopping. Shhhh......(full article)

The Color of Job Cuts in the US Auto
Industry by Seth Sandronsky

Ford
Motor Company announced in late January that it is cutting 30,000 jobs and
closing 14 factories in North America over the next seven years. If
the recent past is an indication of future employment trends in the U.S.,
the effects will be far-reaching on black autoworkers.....(full
article)

Time to Scrap the NPT by Mike Whitney

The purpose of the
NPT (Nonproliferation Treaty) is to reduce or eliminate the development of
nuclear weapons. If it is to have any meaning at all it must be directed
at nations that not only have weapons, but that demonstrate a flagrant
disregard for the international laws condemning their use. The IAEA should
focus its attention on those states that have a clear record of
territorial aggression, military intervention, or who consistently violate
United Nations resolutions....(full article)

I Spy:
Gaming the Senateby Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Niranjan Ramakrishnan on the debate that
never took place during the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on
warrantless spying by the Bush Administration.....(full
article)

This Column Doesn’t Existby Rosemary and Walter Brasch

What if there were
no media? What if for some ethereal reason the media all got together,
decided they really were tired, needed a sabbatical, and created a
self-imposed moratorium on news, their decision being the last story they
published or aired? (full article)

In early December,
aiming to start out 2006 with a bang, David Horowitz's Center for the
Study of Popular Culture (CSPC) sent out a fundraising appeal asking for
contributions to place full-page advertisements in campus newspapers
across the country warning students that they are surrounded by
anti-American leftist academics who hate America. A month later, at a
hearing on academic freedom at Temple University sponsored by a committee
of the state legislature of Pennsylvania, Horowitz could find only one
student to testify against "liberal" professors on campus; that testimony
was purely anecdotal, as the student had not filed an official grievance
with the university.....(full article)

Nukes, Terror, Iran and Blowing Up the
Louvre
by Baruch Kimmerling

It
has become abundantly clear that the very existence of N-weapons is not
only useless for the defense of any country but is the only major threat
against the very existence and survival of human civilization and indeed
of human life itself. The usual arguments are that, so far, nuclear
weapons have not been used since the end of World War II and that nuclear
powers are usually headed by responsible leaders who recognize the
doomsday outcomes resulting from the use of their arsenals. Nevertheless,
both arguments do not provide us with any insurance that ultimately the
devil will not be freed from the bottle, even by a supposed “responsible”
and stable state or leadership....(full
article)

Germany Must Deliver a Palestinian State
by Ahmed Amr

Germany's chancellor
Angela Merkel wasted no time dictating terms to Hamas after it swept to
victory in the Palestinian elections. Her blatant threats to the
Palestinians is proof enough that a few Germans still have a little Nazi
lingering in the closets of their inner souls. Why is it that so many
Germans continue to live in blissful denial of their critical role in the
Nakba? The ethnic cleansing of the native Arab population of Palestine in
1948 might never have happened if Hitler had never been born. If Merkel
had a gram of decency, she would get off her high Nazi stallion and watch
her language when addressing the Palestinian people -- who continue to pay
an intolerable price for the genocidal crimes committed by her kin against
European Jews.....(full article)

Why Hamas Won and What it Means
by Neve Gordon

Although
it is still unclear what the future holds for Israelis and Palestinians, a
few things can be said about the processes that enabled Hamas to win a
landslide victory in the January 25 democratic elections and how the
organization’s triumph will likely affect the local political arena.
Founded in Gaza at the beginning of the first Intifada (December 1987) by
Sheik Ahmad Yassin, Hamas is a direct extension of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Although in the media Hamas tends to be identified with its military arm,
Izzeddin al-Qassam, which is well known for its suicide attacks against
Israeli targets, the organization’s popularity in the Occupied Territories
actually stems from its being seen as the voice of Palestinian dignity and
the symbol of the defense of Palestinian rights at a time of unprecedented
hardship, humiliation, and despair.....(full
article)

Covenant Marriage on the Rocks
by Don Monkerud

After gaining media
attention in the late 1990s with a promise to lower divorce rates across
the nation, the Covenant Marriage Movement has hit the skids. The movement
seeks to establish a legal category of marriage that makes divorce more
difficult. It requires pledges such as a declaration of intent to live
together "forever," and divorce is only allowed for infidelity, physical
or sexual abuse, conviction of a felony or the death penalty, abandonment
for one year, or living separately for two years. Irreconcilable
differences are not grounds for divorce.....(full
article)

Iran -- The Media Fall Into Line
by Media Lens

Media Lens on the UK press coverage on Iran:
When officialdom targets a new “deadly threat,” journalists often
embarrass themselves in their rush to be “on side.”.....(full
article)

--
Perspectives on the Danish Cartoon Controversy --

The Row Over the Danish Cartoonsby Harsha Walia

From the burning of
its flag to a boycott of its brands of butter and cookies, Denmark is
feeling global outrage over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Danish paper Jyllands-Posten first published the cartoons on
Sept. 30, 2005. The drawings included one showing Prophet Muhammad wearing
a turban shaped as a bomb with a lit fuse. Another portrayed him with a
bushy gray beard and holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black
rectangle. A third pictured a middle-aged prophet standing in the desert
with a walking stick, in front of a donkey and a sunset. The purpose of
the cartoons, the chief editor said, was “to examine whether people would
succumb to self-censorship, as we have seen in other cases when it comes
to Muslim issues.” The paper insisted that it meant no offense. In the
past week alone, crowds of angry people in several Arab countries burned
the Danish flag. In Palestine, the European Union offices in Gaza were
surrounded; Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador from Denmark; Libya
closed its embassy; and Iraq, Iran, Jordan and Sudan lodged official
protests. Danish products were taken off the shelves in Saudi Arabia,
Algeria, Kuwait, Bahrain and other countries, forcing one Danish dairy
firm to lay off 800 workers.....(full article)

Why Muslims Are Right To
Be Angry:Danish Cartoons are Latest in a
Campaign of Racist Abuseby Lee Sustar

The publication of
cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper was a
calculated racist provocation in a country where Muslim immigrants are
increasingly under attack. The outrage expressed in demonstrations across
the Muslim world is entirely justified. The U.S. media took a “can’t they
take a joke” line, and Washington politicians sanctimoniously denounced
the violence at Danish embassies in Lebanon and Syria. But they ignored
the fact that Muslims’ anger is fueled by the deaths of well over 100,000
Iraqis since George Bush’s invasion; the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq
and Afghanistan; and Washington’s support for Israeli occupation of
Palestinian lands, as well as authoritarian and corrupt Arab regimes.
Unlike other mostly right-wing papers in Europe, the major U.S. news
outlets haven’t republished the offensive cartoons. Nevertheless, assorted
corporate media hacks used the protests in Muslim countries as an excuse
to bash Islam some more.....(full article)

To An Egyptian Friend, On The Cartoonsby Manuel Garcia, Jr.

I may have the right
to insult you ("freedom of speech"), but both intelligent self-interest
and a sense of humane courteous fellowship with the rest of humanity
("morality") would inform me to exercise this right with care and
forethought, so I make a positive social contribution that outweighs the
misery I may be adding to the world. The exercise of a right does not
disguise the intent of the user, and base motives are in no way justified
by taking advantage of noble principles.....(full article)

Right and Responsibility:
Depictions of the Prophet
Mohammedby Jack Random

The great Lakota
warrior and spiritual leader Crazy Horse had a vision in which he was told
never to take honors for the victories he would achieve. In time, he
learned to honor his vision, refusing to allow his likeness to be depicted
in any form. To this day, while there are paintings and photographs of
many of his contemporaries, there is no historical likeness of Crazy
Horse. His spiritual belief was honored even by those responsible for the
near genocide of his people. By the standards of a free press or freedom
of expression, every journalist in the west had a right to depict the
greatest warrior of them all. Surely, every photographer and artist had a
motive to secure for posterity the first and only likeness ever captured
yet they chose to refrain. I consider it a tribute of the highest order to
both Crazy Horse and those who honored him that they chose to uphold a
personal religious decree. Flash forward to the Prophet Mohammed and the
Islamic prohibition on any reproduction or depiction of his likeness.....(full
article)

Punishing Denmark:
Taking on the Wrong Enemy
by Ramzy Baroud

Not even the handy excuse of freedom of the
press is so reasonable a defense to the mockery. Such freedom should not
be the kind of versatile pretext unleashed only to widen the divide
between the West and the Muslim world. Moreover, why not admit that in
most Western societies, there are many unquestionable values, ancient and
recent, that are taboo, which few dare to approach, the Holocaust being
one of them. But it's not the Western media's inconsistencies that I wish
to focus on here. What I wish to examine are the inconsistencies of the
Arab and Muslim collective response to aggression, tangible or
otherwise....(full article)

February 7

Tax Shelters Disguised as Health Care Reformby Gene C. Gerard

In
his State of the Union address last week President Bush finally
acknowledged, after five years in office, that “we must confront the
rising cost of [health] care … and help people afford the insurance
coverage they need.” Millions of Americans have lost access to health
insurance since Mr. Bush took office in 2000. But his proposal to
“strengthen health savings accounts by making sure individuals and small
business employees can buy insurance” will have little if any impact on
the poor and middle class who lack coverage. Instead, it will help the
wealthy protect their assets, and actually increase the ranks of the
uninsured.....(full article)

Why Can’t We All Insult One Another?by Ahmed Amr

All this crap about
“free speech” is intellectual rot. It’s just the Scandinavian way of
burning a cross on your front yard. They don’t do anti-semitism anymore
because the European Jews have packed up and left their ancient
continental homes. Why do you think Europeans are so tolerant of Israeli
repression against native Palestinians? There must be something comforting
in seeing your victims as tormentors? It helps alleviate any lingering
guilt. It allows Europeans to claim that “we all do genocide.” Which
brings us back to the art of showing contempt for European racists. How
exactly can you hurt their feelings? Would it help to curse their mothers
and fathers who home schooled their kids in how to vilify neighbors with
different cultures? Is it safe to make a habit of giving a homicidal
skinhead the one finger salute? Should you burn effigies of Hitler on
their front lawns? Is it enough to boycott their cheese and butter? Do you
think they would be offended if you label them racists or do they feel a
sense of entitlement to publicly flaunt their bigotry? (full
article)

Beware Osama bin Saddam Hugo Chavezby Mark Drolette

I
read a headline the other day that was enough to make me spit out my
early-morning coffee, “Rumsfeld
Likens Chavez’s Rise to Hitler’s.”
Chavez, of course, is Venezuela President Hugo Chavez. Rumsfeld, of
course, is Donald Rumsfeld, recently voted for the fourth year running Man
Most Likely to Utter Inanities Causing Sudden Beverage Expectoration
(Non-George W. Bush Division). It’s not that I’m surprised by anything the
Bushies do, because I’m not. It’s been Kristallnachtclear to me for
years now that this group of homicidal chickenhawks is capable of doing
anything and quite willing to do it, no matter how, um, fowl. Even so, I’m
still caught off-guard now and then by their sheer chutzpah, their
cheekiness, their gall.....(full article)

Open Letter to Cindy
Sheehan: Challenging the Pro-War
Democrats by Jack Random

You are right to
challenge Senator Feinstein but you are mistaken to challenge her from
within the establishment of the Democratic Party. At risk of being crude,
while the spectacle of a leading antiwar spokesperson challenging a
Democratic senator in a progressive state may concern them, they will
crush you like a bothersome insect. They will smear you by proxy and cast
you aside like a broken toy. They will go about their business as if it
never happened. They are not afraid of you as a Democrat. If you wish to
stage a symbolic protest and capitalize on media exposure, it could be a
worthwhile endeavor, but if you wish to have an impact, to shake the
Democratic Party from its pro-war slumber, challenge them as an
independent.....(full article)

Jewish Secular Fundamentalismby Gilad Atzmon

While most commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict do restrict
themselves to political and ideological criticism and analysis, a bunch of
commentators take it one step further. They see themselves as the saviors
of the Palestinians and cosmic representative of universal values. Rather
than just enlightening us with some revolutionary visionary outlook, they
insist upon suggesting an operative agenda. Resolutely, they insist upon
telling the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular what is
good for them. In
an article published a few days ago in Dissident Voice, Shraga
Elam, an Israeli journalist who lives in Zurich and presents himself as a
supporter of the Palestinian cause, makes a clear call to the Hamas to
dissolve the Palestinian Authority was announced. “Facing an impossible
situation,” stresses Elam, “Hamas can still correct its mistake of
participating in the election by dissolving the Palestinian Authority (PA)
and ending the farce introduced by the Oslo Accord.” This is no doubt a
courageous statement by an Israeli who pretends to express his love for
the Palestinians. Considering the sweeping victory of the Hamas, there is
no other choice but to admit that the Hamas represents the Palestinian
spirit at least at the current stage. And it is that very spirit that
elected the Hamas to govern the PA. Yet to call Hamas’s participation a
“mistake” is to undermine the choice, the will and the spirit of the
Palestinian people. I would admit that it is rather strange to hear such a
demand from a ‘solidarity’ campaigner.....(full article)

There's Something Rotten
Far Beyond the State of Denmark:
NATO's Caricature of “Freedom
of Speech” and its Allies in the Peace Movement by Gary Zatzman

At
the ideological level, the racism of those by-now-notorious Danish
cartoons is clear enough. The denunciation of this racism is growing and
this is positive. However, in terms of the forces actually organizing and
mobilizing something quite dark by means of this allegedly light-hearted
caricature of a "war" among caricaturists, it is seriously incumbent on
all of us also to penetrate its political significance.....(full
article)

The Iran Crisis -- “Diplomacy” as a
Launch Pad for Missilesby Norman Solomon

The current flurry
of Western diplomacy will probably turn out to be groundwork for launching
missiles at Iran. Air attacks on targets in Iran are very likely. Yet many
antiwar Americans seem eager to believe that won’t happen....(full
article)

Should Maryland Carry Out the
Premeditated Killing of Vernon Evans?by Kevin Zeese

Maryland's
premeditated killing of Vernon Evans wasstayedby the Maryland
Court of Appeals yesterday. The State's use of the power to kill another
human should be a time for reflection by Maryland and the nation. Do we
want to be a nation of executioners? Do we want to participate in killing
people through a very flawed justice system? Do we want to continue to
continue the cycle of violence? (full article)

Hillary and George: Two Warmongers in a
Podby Joshua Frank

There aren’t many
elected officials in Washington who want to throw the gauntlet down on
Iran more than Hillary Clinton. The New York Senator believes the
president has been too soft on the militant Islamic country, claiming that
Bush has played down the threat of a nuclear-armed Tehran. "I believe we
lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to
downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations," Clinton told an
audience at Princeton University on January 18. "I don't believe you face
threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing
on the sidelines … We cannot and should not -- must not -- permit Iran to
build or acquire nuclear weapons," Clinton added. "In order to prevent
that from occurring … we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in
the United Nations."....(full article)

David Edwards ofMedia Lenshas a brilliant
critique of the shortcomings of theIraq Body Counttally of civilian
deaths in Iraq:Paved With Good Intentions: On Iraq Body Count, Part 1 and
Part 2. Edwards points out
the generally recognized fact that IBC's methodology -- only
listing deaths reported by two or more Western sources -- likely results
in their tally being a conservative estimate of civilian deaths. However,
Edwards goes further by showing that there is a systematic source of bias
in that Western news agencies are more likely to report deaths caused by
"insurgents" than those caused by "Coalition" (aka American) forces.
Edwards reports on an examination of the IBC database for the
six-month period from January through June 2005. They found that, of 58
incidents involving at least 10 deaths, only one death was attributed to
US/Coalition action. Further, during this period, only 15 civilian deaths
total were attributed "to 'coalition' air strikes, helicopter gunfire and
tank fire," a result that is completely implausible to anyone who has
followed news of the repeated massive attacks by US and allied forces on
alleged "insurgent strongholds." Very disturbing was the tone of IBC's
founder John Sloboda's response to being e-mailed a question about this
potential bias....(full article)

“Dangerous” Academics:
Right-wing Distortions About Leftist
Professors by Robert Jensen

In an “urgent” e-mail last
week, right-wing activist David Horowitz hyped his latest book about
threats to America’s youth from leftist professors. The ad for The
Professors -- The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America describes me
as: “Texas Journalism Professor Robert Jensen, who rabidly hates the
United States, and recently told his students, ‘The United States has lost
the war in Iraq and that’s a good thing.’” I’m glad Horowitz got my name
right (people often misspell it “Jenson”). But everything else is
distortion, and that one sentence teaches much about the reactionary
right’s disingenuous rhetorical strategy....(full
article)

February 6

Detroit Dialectic: The Irony of the Super
Bowl in a Supercilious Nationby Zbignew Zingh

General Motors has announced
that it lost billions of dollars last quarter. Delphi, GM's primary parts
supplier, has demanded that its workers cut their salaries by half or more
and reduce their health care benefits. Ford will lay off 30,000 blue
collar employees and close factories. Daimler-Chrysler will lay off 6,000
white collar employees. Throughout the country, American industry is
curtailing pension funds or eliminating them altogether. The naked pursuit
of profit causes companies to cannibalize themselves and to decimate their
work forces. Wall Street cheers while business cuts labor to the bone in
the name of shareholder value. But while it rains pink slips on the
workingmen and women of Motor City, Detroit hosts the Super Bowl. The
Chief Executive Officers, the captains of industry, the bankers, the
politicians, the financiers, the business gurus and show biz glitterati,
the movers and shakers of our times, will pack the luxury boxes dining and
wining like Roman patricians. The proles, sitting in the bleachers or at
their big screen televisions (purchased on revolving credit at 18%
interest), will watch the spectacle and lustily indulge in the party. Eat.
Drink. Be merry. For tomorrow we lose everything.....
(full article)

Bush Beckons the God of Pluto: Nuclear
Reprocessing
by Mina Hamilton

On Monday, February
6th the Bush administration is planning to unveil a new energy policy
initiative. After a 30-year ban, the US is about to gut a key
non-proliferation tool and resume nuclear reprocessing. To the uninformed,
reprocessing sounds as bland and harmless as, well, processed cheese. The
nuclear industry has contributed to this notion by sometimes referring to
reprocessing as "recycling". Quite the contrary, nuclear reprocessing is a
dangerous activity that, among other potentially catastrophic downsides,
makes plutonium accessible for theft and use in atomic bombs. . . . The
new initiative sends a confusing message to the world. How can the US
government continue to urge, cajole and threaten "rogue" countries that
want to reprocess -- while, simultaneously saying, oh, by the way, we're
going to do it in the US? (full article)

Don’t Be Evilby Patricia Goldsmith

Don’t be evil is
Google’s corporate motto, and a very good one. Google aspires to be
a
different kind of corporation, and it’s taking the heat for it. The
Bush Reich wants Google’s “honey
pot” of high-quality, comprehensive information, and Wall Street wants
to knock it down to size for thinking it can be different. It stumbled on
predicted earnings this quarter and got a little taste. We’ll see how long
they hold out on keeping their materials private. Sasa Zorovic, an analyst
at Oppenheimer & Co. confidently predicts, “At some point Google will be
humbled.” And that’s what happens when you go public. Every time.
Cause and effect. The market system is designed to produce a reliable
result -- profitability -- every time, regardless of the human or
environmental cost. There is no way to be a publicly traded corporation
and remain free to be moral. Evil isn’t optional. (On the other hand, the
truly evil, real black holes, are also privately held; I’m thinking
Carlyle Group.) The Democratic Party has undergone the same process.....(full
article)

Facts are Factsby Peter Kurth

My previous column
about the James Frey-Million Little Pieces-Flog It to Death
literary scandal, still blazing in the media heavens as I write this, led
to some interesting responses. Mainly these had to do with the nature of
truth, memory and fact, which aren’t the same things. Last I heard, truth
was unknowable, memory unreliable, and facts -- well, facts are facts.
Sort of. For instance, a reader wrote in to say that, contrary to my
report, A Million Little Pieces never sold “3.5 million copies in
hardcover.” And it didn’t, as I discovered when I looked farther -- less
than breathlessly, I admit, because Frey’s fictitious “memoir” has been a
huge commercial blockbuster, and other writers can be forgiven for getting
their millions mixed up....(full article)

Palestine’s Olive Oil in North Americaby Sonia Nettnin

An economic market
with international growth potential that has emerged recently is the fair
trade of Palestinian products in North America. Farmers in village
cooperatives and farming collectives have the opportunity to sell goods,
such as olive oil and olive soap at fair prices. Moreover it enables
Palestinian farmers, workers and press operators to sustain an integral
part of their culture that goes back centuries....(full
article)

The Passing and Passion of Grandpa Al
Lewis, 1910-2006 by Mitchel Cohen

For many people
familiar with Enron’smeteoric rise and sudden downfall four years
ago, the high-flying energy companyand the company's crooked "E" logo have
come to represent corporate greed, corruption and excessat its worst. But
more important, Enron should be symbolic for something else: it was the
first in a long list of corporate scandals involving the Bush
administration and numerous members of Congress. Back in August 2001, just
two months before Enron imploded in a wave of accounting scandals in which
thousands of employees lost their jobs and their pensions, and which wiped
out $60 billion in shareholder value, an Enron lobbyist tipped off the
Bush administration about the company's impending financial problems.....(full
article)

The Case For Bushby Michael Smith

“Human life is a
gift from our Creator --
and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale.”

Dear George,

I can’t tell you how
relieved I was to hear you speak these words. I’m particularly gratified
that you’ll be abolishing wage slavery now that you’ve admitted human
beings can’t be put up for sale. Like so many others I’ve really loathed
selling myself in the marketplace all these years. Job interviews are the
worst. Anyway, once you get that new and improved Emancipation
Proclamation in the works I’ll turn in my resignation letter and never
prostitute myself for wages again.....(full
letter)

Questioning The Twinkieby Aaron Michael Gordon

Tuesday
night, as King George rambled through his Greatest Hits talking points
during the State of the Union address, I had an epiphany (I was playing
the drinking game, after all). Republicans succeed politically because
they control the discourse. Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock,
this isn’t really news, nor cause for me to trot out 50-cent words like
“epiphany” or “catharsis”. Nope, that’s not the “Eureka” experience I had.
I know the why and the where … but I think I understand the how now.
Republicans win because they purposely ask the wrong questions....(full
article)

Poverty, Consumerism and Anti-Imperialismby toni solo

Several responses
are standard to criticism of ideologically bankrupt and morally
schizophrenic initiatives like the UK's Make Poverty History campaign. One
is to rail at the impudence of calling into question the campaign
organizers sincerity and good intentions. Another is to pout, "well, what
alternative do YOU offer...?" Or, more disingenuously, critics will be
accused of sneering at the genuine heartfelt desire among the millions of
people who contribute hard-earned money to projects and programs meant to
alleviate world poverty's all-too-numerous symptoms. At the global elite's
Davos summit in the last few days, leading representatives of corporate
capitalism have made superficially impressive commitments to fund health
and other program in less developed countries. A phrase that comes to mind
is one used in Latin America in work with women in abusive relationships
-- no mas confites en el infierno, no more chocolates in hell. When
people ask why so many tens of millions of people lack decent health care
and education, one answer is clear. For over two decades the World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund and the governments that control those
institutions have consistently told weak national governments in less
developed countries to reduce public social spending....(full
article)

Smothering the King Legacy
With Kind Wordsby Norman Solomon

Hours
after Coretta Scott King died, President Bush led off the State of the
Union address by praising her as “a beloved, graceful, courageous woman
who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream.”
For good measure, at the end of his speech, Bush reverently invoked the
name of her martyred husband, Martin Luther King Jr. The president is one
of countless politicians who zealously oppose most of what King struggled
for -- at the same time that they laud his name with syrupy words. It
wouldn’t be shrewd to openly acknowledge the basic disagreements. Instead,
Bush and his allies offer up platitudes while pretending that King’s work
ended with the fight against racial segregation. Now that Dr. King’s widow
is no longer alive, the smarmy process will be even easier: Just praise
him as a beloved civil rights leader, as though the last few years of his
life -- filled with struggles for economic justice and peace -- didn’t
exist. Ignore King’s profound challenge to the kind of budget priorities
and militarism holding sway today....
(full article)

Congress’ Cushy
Pension Plan: What They Have That You Don’t by Joe Allen

The list is becoming
endless. Enron, WorldCom, United Airlines, Delphi, Verizon, IBM and many
more major corporations have abandoned, bankrupted, stolen, cut back or
“redefined” the pension plans of their employees. When workers try to
collect in the future, they’ll find their pension benefits drastically cut
back -- or, in some cases, eliminated altogether. “Things are not looking
good for retirees with the collapse of the defined benefit plans,” said
Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University. “In 20 years, the only
people with these plans will be government employees.” Old-age poverty is
once again a thing to fear in America. But in Washington, the politicians
who let this corporate hurricane destroy our pensions enjoy a retirement
savings system and other benefits and perks that ordinary workers couldn’t
imagine, even in the best of times....
(full
article)

Afghanistan Four Years Laterby Mike Whitney

Over four
years after toppling the fanatical Taliban, Hamid Karzai is expected to
sign an agreement for economic assistance from more than 60 donor
countries. The Afghanistan Compact is just the latest of many plans to
restore security to the war-torn nation and revive the fragile economy. It
is a poignant reminder that the Bush administration’s promises to rebuild
the country and establish democracy have never been realized. Afghanistan
has been a policy disaster from the get-go. The country is ravaged by war
and unemployment, security beyond the capital of
Kabul is virtually nonexistent, and
malnutrition rates among children are higher than they are anywhere other
than sub-Saharan
Africa. Now, Karzai, who has seen his
funding from the
US slashed
year after year, is forced to take his begging bowl to the world
community, asking for the crumbs they can spare to bandage his failed
state together....(full article)

All progressives
extend their heartfelt wishes for a speedy, full recovery to ABC
journalists Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt, victims of a terrible roadside
bombing in Iraq. Where we differ from conservatives who express similar
sentiments is in our honesty regarding IED use by the Iraqi insurgency. No
delusions cloud our understanding of what it means, especially in the long
run. Improvised explosive devices -- as made clear in media coverage of
hospital care provided those wounded by such weapons -- are the most
lethal of all means employed against U.S. troops. Despite body armor and
other countermeasures, the constantly evolving sophistication of these
horrific explosives renders them impossible to thwart. They would kill and
maim young Americans who should have never been sent to Iraq in the first
place...for years and decades into the bloody future. If we allowed
that to happen, that is, by continuing to adhere to the mad, meat-grinder
mentality of George Bush and all those who cruelly, absurdly believe that
we must “honor those who’ve died” by dispatching an unending stream of
vulnerable vehicles down deathtrap highways until “complete victory” is
achieved....
(full article)

Report from the World Social Forum in
Venezuelaby Carl Doerner

Caracas, Venezuela
-- President Hugo Chavez delivered a brief, for him, 90-minute speech on
January 27 to about 18,000 of the delegates gathered here for the Sixth
World Social Forum. He referred to George W. Bush as “Mr. Danger” and to
Cindy Sheehan, who was seated near him, as “Mrs. Hope.” The other 100,000
delegates from around the world found other venues. One that struck me as
more indicative of what is happening in Venezuela and its Bolivarian
Revolution than any political speech might provide was at a Mission
School. Teachers from Cuba were key to the establishment of a literacy
campaign in poor neighborhoods throughout this country, and these are now
producing their own teachers. Venezuelan leaders, deeply committed to the
development of their own rendering of a socialist economy, one free of the
exploitation of Latin America’s resources and labor and the flooding of
its markets with cheaper produce, describe three grave threats to their
revolutionary process....(full article)

Street News and NYC's Homeless:
An Interview with John “Indio” Washington by Mickey Z.

John "Indio"
Washington, 67, is editor-in-chief of Street News (SN),
a longtime New York City publication that focuses on issues
of homelessness ... primarily written and sold by homeless New Yorkers.
This wasn't always the case. In the late 1980s, Indio was homeless. "In
December 1989," he recalls, "I was riding on the #3 train 'n I saw this
Black sister selling SN. I asked her if I could help sell the paper
'n she could hit me with whatever she wanted to give me for helping her.
She instead took me downtown to SN headquarters 'n they gave me 5
or 10 free papers to sell. I never looked back.".....(full
article)

Hamas and Usby Gila Svirsky

Listening to the reactions of passersby at the recent Jerusalem vigil of
Women in Black, you would think it was our peaceful little group that put
the Hamas into power. This stems from Israeli right-wing politicians who
are asserting that Hamas won because of the Gaza withdrawal and other
conciliatory overtures, i.e., “rewarding terrorism.” Indeed, Bibi
Netanyahu & Co. are delighted with the Hamas victory, on which they can
now build a fear-saturated election campaign, and return voters to the
fold who lately had slipped into something more moderate. But here’s my
take on what made Hamas victorious in the recent elections: Israel’s
failure to sit down and negotiate an end to the occupation. This is often
phrased as “the failure of Fatah to make progress on peace,” but they
amount to the same thing: the Fatah failed because Israel refused to offer
any reward for moderation, refusing to sit down and negotiate with
them....(full article)

Hamas's Electoral Victory
Serves the Israeli Governmentby Shraga Elam

The
sweeping electoral victory of Hamas is primarily a triumph for the Israeli
government and a big defeat for Palestinian interests. The international
pressure on the Palestinians is growing. If Hamas will not make
substantial and painful concessions it risks a massive cut in the
financial international support and further escalation in the Israeli
anti-Palestinian measures. If Hamas commits to such concessions, it will
not only betray its voters, but the Israeli government will demand
more....(full article)

February 1

The State of the Union:
A Stumbling Illusion of Strength by Jack Random

If ever there was
definitive proof that our president is suffering under a spell of
delusion, it occurred in the opening sixty seconds of the State of the
Union Address. The state of our union may be strong if you are the chief
executive officer of Exxon, Chevron or British Petroleum but it is
anything but strong on Main Street. I have not yet seen the usual word
count of the president’s address but one of the most glaring attributes of
this speech was a contrast of conceptualization. The president used the
words freedom and liberty (oblivious to the assault he has led on American
liberty) repeatedly but, by my count, he used the word “justice” only once
-- and then in reference to New Orleans, where the homeless, destitute,
dead and displaced have lost all hope of justice for a crime of federal
negligence spanning multiple administrations. There is no justice in the
president’s vision....(full article)

Cindy Sheehan and Lesser-Evil Politics:
Campaigning Against the War in Californiaby Joshua Frank

Cindy Sheehan may be
elevating her activism to the next level. The mother of the antiwar
movement, while attending the World Social Forum in Venezuela, told
reporters that she is considering running against Senator Dianne Feinstein
in California’s Democratic primary next June. Shinning a spotlight on
Feinstein’s malignant war blemishes would be the focal point of her
campaign. Undoubtedly, Sheehan would receive generous support for her
quest from California’s ever-increasing war resistance. Sean Penn would
likely race to her side for photo-ops. The New York Times would
write their slimy op-eds. Fox News would deploy their smear brigades --
this could potentially be the biggest thing the antiwar movement has seen
since Sheehan propped up her tent outside Dubya’s Crawford ranch. At the
very least it would get the American public talking....(full
article)

The Democrats: Fulla-Bluff-and-Bluster
by Sharon Smith

John Kerry’s scheme
for a last-ditch filibuster blocking Judge Samuel Alito’s Senate
confirmation vote on Monday backfired badly. To be sure, Kerry made an
impassioned plea last Thursday. “It’s our right and our responsibility to
oppose [Alito] vigorously and to fight against this radical upending of
the Supreme Court,” his statement read. Yet Kerry was not even present to
read the statement in person last Thursday, or to attend the full Senate
hearings. He had jetted off to Davos, Switzerland, to join other
representatives of the rich and famous at the World Economic Forum. His
“vigorous” opposition was apparently conducted by phone (conjuring up
images of Kerry calling out, “Save me a seat at the bar, Bono. I just have
to make a phone call.”) Kerry’s eleventh-hour campaign might seem in
contradiction to explicit instructions from the party’s powerbrokers in
the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), issued last Tuesday. “A
filibuster is certain to fail,” the statement read. “The second-best way
for Democrats to avoid still more Alitos on the Court is to make major
gains in the Senate this November. And the best way is to win the White
House in 2008.” But Kerry’s scheme was also launched with an eye toward
2008. His feeble maneuver came only when it was clear that Republicans
already had the 60 votes to defeat an attempted filibuster....(full
article)

But putting aside
such trifling technicalities like the basis for all American law (which,
come to think of it, exactly mirrors Bush administration policy), there’s
another aspect of this military meltdown thing that kind of bothers me:
I'm no budget expert, and I realize a billion dollars doesn’t go as far as
it used to, but still, I'm thinkin' if you can't defend one lousy country
(and that’s what we have now: one lousy country) with 400-plus billion
dollars a year (which doesn’t even account for those periodic oh-so clever
off-budget multi-billion dollar war-fueling “supplemental appropriations”
inappropriately passed by a lapdog Congress), then maybe some rethinking
needs to occur. (Or thinking, period.)....(full
article)

Betting on Biscuit: Does Post-Fire
Logging Make Ecological
or Economic Sense?by Matthew Koehler

It’s rare to find
two diametrically opposed sides using the same exact posterchild to
support their views. However, that’s essentially what’s developed over the
past few years as the logging industry have locked horns with conservation
groups and scientists in a battle over so-called “healthy forests” policy
and the future of America’s public lands following wildfires. That “same
exact posterchild” is the 2002 Biscuit Fire that burned nearly 500,000
acres in the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area of southwestern Oregon’s Siskiyou
National Forest and the U.S. Forest Service’s subsequentBiscuit “Fire Recovery Project”that approved
cutting down 19,000 acres of ancient forest reserves and roadless
wildlands in a forest of global ecological significance....(full
article)

Osama's Book or Oprah's Bookby Rosemarie Jackowski

The queen of trivia
does it again. Am I the only person on the planet who is outraged with
recent Oprah Shows? Usually the trivial nature of the topics she chooses
is enough to liquefy brain cells. That is not the worse of it. Recently
she seemed to enjoy her one-upsmanship in the book scandal with author
James Frey. The frying of Frey was troubling because there are more
important lies out there. Hey Oprah, remember the big WMD lie? What about
the lies about the numbers of homeless among us? What about the lies about
the causes of poverty in the USA? What about the lies about the number of
civilians killed in Iraq? Killed kids should at least rate a nod from
someone in the US media....(full article)

“America as the World’s Only Superpower
Actually Detracts from our National Security”: Interview with the Editor
of The American Conservative, former Neocon, Scott McConnellby Kevin Zeese

Scott McConnell is
the editor ofThe American Conservative,a magazine he
founded with Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos in 2002. McConnell has
a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, and was formerly the
editorial page editor of The New York Post. He has been a columnist
for Antiwar.comand New York
Press. His work has been published in Commentary, Fortune,
National Review, The New Republic, and many other
publication....(full interview)